The organisers of the John Nswazwi Memorial Cup tournament have decided to give back to the community by initiating floating trophies for Junior Certificate Examinations (JCE) and Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE).

Speaking in an interview at the memorial cup tournament finals on New Year’s Day, the organisers’ spokesperson, Kgomotso Kaisara explained that at this year’s event they decided to come up with something different from the sporting activities, hence they came up with the idea for trophies.

She pointed out that the majority of participants in the annual tourney have been youth some of them still school going students.

Kaisara said as such they wanted to give them an encouragement on their school work as way of improving outstanding performance and results.

She said there has often been an outcry that results for general science subjects were not impressive and through their introduction of a trophy, which the schools will have to compete for, they believe it will encourage and push students to work hard on their school work to get outstanding results.

Kaisara nonetheless said the focus will also be on humanities subjects as the purpose is also to encourage excellence in school performances.

Giving a background of the tourney, she highlighted that the cup started back in the early nineties and has been held annual on rotational basis in the villages of Goshwe, Makuta and Nswazwi.

These villages, she said, were classified under the late John Nswazwi, who was the paramount chief of Bakalanga of these villages, adding that initially they were four with Marapong and because of the distance and other logistics, teams from Marapong stopped participating.

She said from the three villages, there are 10 teams registered to compete in the tourney and they are paired through a toss.

Furthermore, she explained that focus is still on two sporting codes of netball and football only but in future they plan to introduce other sporting codes for growth of the memorial cup.

The area councillor, Patrick Kaisara said although the annual event turned out to be popular in the early nineties, it has been there since in the eighties with the main idea being to bring together Bakalanga of the late paramount chief.

He said it has grown over the years to attract few sponsors, which have managed to assist the organisers to continually host the tournament.

Kaisara however said they want to have a long term sponsorship because in that way, they can be able to grow further and even add other sporting codes to cater for others that do not enjoy football and netball.

Meanwhile, last year’s defending champion in netball, Nswazwi Tigers lost in the finals to Nswazwi Sweepers 20-21 and in football Home Sweepers managed to defend their title by beating Goshwe United 3-1 on penalties after the two sides ended on nil all draw.

The tournament was sponsored by Excellent Printers to tune of P15 000.